PHOTOS: Women’s Giant Slalom at 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics

KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia (AP) — This, Tina Maze can say now, was what she had in mind all along: An Olympic performance that hadn’t been seen in 42 years.
So what if she struggled for race after race on the World Cup circuit, unable to duplicate her record-setting season of a year ago? So what if things grew so dire that she felt compelled to hire a new coach last month?
‘‘This season’s plan,’’ Maze insisted Tuesday, ‘‘was to show my best here.’’
Well, if so, it worked. Dealing with the wild weather better than anyone — the thick snowflakes at the top of the hill, the rain in the middle, the sleet at the bottom — Maze turned in a fantastic opening leg and a sufficient second run to win the giant slalom for her second gold medal of the Sochi Games, after last week’s downhill.
The Slovenian skier is the first woman since Marie-Theres Nadig of Switzerland at the 1972 Sapporo Games with enough versatility to master the downhill’s test of pure speed and the giant slalom’s more technical turns at the same Olympics.